0 avis
One Analogy Can Hide Another : Physics and Biology in Alchian's "Economic Natural Selection"
Article
Today, Alchian's “Uncertainty, Evolution, and Economic Theory” (1950) is hailed by evolutionary economists as a most important piece that resumed an evolutionary brand of theorizing in economics after the eclipse of the interwar period. On the other hand, Alchian's article is also cherished by mainstream economists who consider it to be a powerful defense of the maximization principle in the theory of the firm. Our examination of the early intellectual life of Alchian shows that it was his involvement in military systems analysis at the RAND Corporation that led him to reckon that uncertainty was a fundamental obstacle to marginal analysis. We then demonstrate that Alchian's economic natural selection is a statistical argument that, if phrased in biological parlance, owes its logic to statistical mechanics. This invites us to reconsider the strong opposition usually made between evolutionist and mechanist modes of thinking.
Suggestions
Du même auteur
Why Were Biological Analogies in Economics "A Bad Thing"? : Edith Penrose's Battles against Social Darwinism and McCarthyism in Science in Context
Levallois, Clément , 20111201 - 465-485 P.
Article
The heuristic value of evolutionary biology for economics is still much under debate. We suggest that in addition to analytical considerations, socio-cultural values can well be at stake in this issue. To demonstrate it, we use a historical case and ...
Source : COLLECTIONS DU LEARNING HUB
Can de-growth be considered a policy option? : A historical note on Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and the Club of Rome in Ecological Economics
Levallois, Clément , 20100901 - 2271-2278 P.
Article
At a few months' interval, Georgescu-Roegen's The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (1971) and Club of Rome's Limits to Growth (1972) were published. Both emphasized the dangers of economic growth, and both drew negative reactions from mainstream ...
Source : COLLECTIONS DU LEARNING HUB